Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig

As historian Mark Essig reveals in Lesser Beasts, swine have such a bad reputation for precisely the same reasons they are so valuable as a source of food: they are intelligent, self-sufficient, and omnivorous. What's more, he argues, we ignore our historic partnership with these astonishing animals at our peril.

The Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels, and Why It Matters

Nothing seems more real than the minds of other people. When you consider what your boss is thinking or whether your spouse is happy, you are admitting them into the "mind club". It's easy to assume other humans can think and feel, but what about a cow, a computer, a corporation? What kinds of minds do they have? Daniel M. Wegner and Kurt Gray are award-winning psychologists who have discovered that minds - while incredibly important - are a matter of perception.

The Art of Living

With this audiobook, the listener will become a student of Bob Proctor as he teaches lessons and presents jewels of wisdom on living an extraordinary life. Listeners will marvel at Proctor's miraculous way of disseminating his decades of business wisdom into easy-to-understand parables and learn lessons on what our creative faculties are and how to use them, why we need to unlearn most of the false beliefs we've been indoctrinated with our whole lives, and how our intellects have the ability not only to put us ahead in life but also to be our biggest detriment.

Long Story Short: The Only Storytelling Guide You'll Ever Need

Did you ever wish you could tell a story that leaves others spellbound? Storytelling teacher and champion Margot Leitman will show you how! With a fun, irreverent, and infographic approach, this guide breaks a story into concrete components with ways to improve content, structure, emotional impact, and delivery through personal anecdotes, relatable examples, and practical exercises.

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

De Waal reviews the rise and fall of the mechanistic view of animals and opens our minds to the idea that animal minds are far more intricate and complex than we have assumed. De Waal's landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal - and human - intelligence.

Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference

Most of us want to make a difference. We donate our time and money to charities and causes we deem worthy, choose careers we consider meaningful, and patronize businesses and buy products we believe make the world a better place. Unfortunately we often base these decisions on assumptions and emotions rather than facts. As a result even our best intentions often lead to ineffective - and sometimes downright harmful - outcomes. How can we do better?

Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

The adoption of the landmark Voting Rights Act in 1965 enfranchised millions of Americans and is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. Yet fifty years later, we are still fighting heated battles over race, representation, and political power - over the right to vote, the central pillar of our democracy. A groundbreaking narrative history of voting rights since 1965, Give Us the Ballot tells the story of what happened after the act was passed.

Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body

In Cure, award-winning science writer Jo Marchant travels the world to meet the physicians, patients and researchers on the cutting edge of this new world of medicine. We learn how meditation protects against depression and dementia, how social connections increase life expectancy and how patients who feel cared for recover from surgery faster. We meet Iraq war veterans who are using a virtual arctic world to treat their burns and children whose ADHD is kept under control with half the normal dose of medication.

TimothyT says:"A brilliantly outlined Classic in the field of Mind Body Medicine"

Spill Simmer Falter Wither

A debut novel already praised as "unbearably poignant and beautifully told" (Eimear McBride), this captivating story follows - over the course of four seasons - a misfit man who adopts a misfit dog. It is springtime, and two outcasts - a man ignored, even shunned by his village, and the one-eyed dog he takes into his quiet, tightly shuttered life - find each other, by accident or fate, and forge an unlikely connection. As their friendship grows, their small seaside town suddenly takes note of them.

Excellent Women

Mildred Lathbury is a clergyman's daughter and a mild-mannered spinster in 1950s England. She is one of those excellent women - the smart, supportive, repressed women whom men take for granted. As Mildred gets embroiled in the lives of her new neighbors - anthropologist Helena Napier; Helen's handsome, dashing husband, Rocky; and Julian Malory, the vicar next door - the novel presents a series of snapshots of human life as actually, and pluckily, lived.

Writing Creative Nonfiction

Bringing together the imaginative strategies of fiction storytelling and new ways of narrating true, real-life events, creative nonfiction is the fastest-growing part of the creative writing world. It's a cutting-edge genre that's reshaping how we write (and read) everything from biographies and memoirs to blogs and public speaking scripts to personal essays and magazine articles.

Washington's Immortals: The Untold Story of an Elite Regiment Who Changed the Course of the Revolution

In August 1776, a little over a month after the Continental Congress had formally declared independence from Britain, the revolution was on the verge of a sudden and disastrous end. General George Washington found his troops outmanned and outmaneuvered at the Battle of Brooklyn, and it looked like there was no escape. But thanks to a series of desperate rear-guard attacks by a single heroic regiment, famously known as the Immortal 400, Washington was able to evacuate his men, and the nascent Continental Army lived to fight another day.

History Reader says:"Groundbreaking masterpiece on American Revolution"

The Worst Class Trip Ever

In this hilarious novel, written in the voice of eighth-grader Wyatt Palmer, Dave Barry takes us on a class trip to Washington, DC. Wyatt, his best friend, Matt, and a few kids from Culver Middle School find themselves in a heap of trouble - not just with their teachers, who have long lost patience with them - but from several mysterious men they first meet on their flight to the nation's capital.

Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life

In the mid-70s, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By 1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up. In 1981 he quit forever. Born Standing Up is, in his own words, the story of "why I did stand-up and why I walked away".

Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness

Mindfulness—the art of paying attention with openness and curiosity to the present moment—has attracted ever-growing interest and tens of thousands of practitioners. This uniquely accessible guide provides a scientific explanation for how mindfulness positively and powerfully affects the brain and body, as well as practical guidance.

I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive. Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York.

We

Set in the 26th century A.D., Yevgeny Zamyatin's masterpiece describes life under the regimented totalitarian society of OneState, ruled over by the all-powerful "Benefactor." Recognized as the inspiration for George Orwell's 1984, We is the archetype of the modern dystopia, or anti-Utopia: a great prose poem detailing the fate that might befall us all if we surrender our individual selves to some collective dream of technology and fail in the vigilance that is the price of freedom.

Flight

Flight is the hilarious and tragic story of an orphaned Indian boy - "Zits" - who travels back and forth through time in a charged search for his true identity. With powerful, swift prose, Flight follows the troubled teenager as he learns that violence is not the answer.

The Turn of the Screw

Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Emmy winner Emma Thompson lends her immense talent and experienced voice to Henry James' Gothic ghost tale, The Turn of the Screw. When a governess is hired to care for two children at a British country estate, she begins to sense an otherworldly presence around the grounds. Are they really ghosts she's seeing? Or is something far more sinister at work?

The Association of Small Bombs

When brothers Tushar and Nakul Khurana, two Delhi schoolboys, pick up their family's television at a repair shop with their friend, Mansoor Ahmed, one day in 1996, disaster strikes without warning. A bomb - one of the many "small" bombs that go off seemingly unheralded across the world - detonates in the Delhi marketplace, instantly claiming the lives of the Khurana boys, to the devastation of their parents. Mansoor survives, bearing the physical and psychological effects of the bomb.

Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original "Psycho"

From "America's principal chronicler of its greatest psychopathic killers" (Boston Book Review) comes the definitive account of Ed Gein, a mild-mannered Wisconsin farmhand who stunned an unsuspecting nation - and redefined the meaning of the word psycho.

Mindfulness in Plain English

With over a quarter of a million copies sold, Mindfulness in Plain English is one of the most influential books in the burgeoning field of mindfulness and a timeless classic introduction to meditation. This is a book that people listen to, love, and share - a book that people talk about, write about, reflect on, and return to over and over again.

In the Country We Love: My Family Divided

Diane Guerrero, the television actress from the megahit Orange Is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, was just 14 years old on the day her parents were detained and deported while she was at school. Born in the US, Guerrero was able to remain in the country and continue her education, depending on the kindness of family friends who took her in and helped her build a life and a successful acting career for herself, without the support system of her family.

The Doors of Perception

The critically acclaimed novelist and social critic Aldous Huxley, describes his personal experimentation with the drug mescaline and explores the nature of visionary experience. The title of this classic comes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."

Publisher's Summary

In this compelling, powerful book, highly respected writer and commentator Jack Holland sets out to answer a daunting question: How do you explain the oppression and brutalization of half the world's population by the other half, throughout history? The result takes the listener on an eye-opening journey through centuries, continents, and civilizations as it looks at both historical and contemporary attitudes to women.

Encompassing the Church, witch hunts, sexual theory, Nazism and pro-life campaigners, we arrive at today's developing world, where women are increasingly and disproportionately at risk because of radicalised religious belief, famine, war and disease. Well-informed and researched, highly readable and thought-provoking, this is no outmoded feminist polemic: It's a refreshingly straightforward investigation into an ancient, pervasive, and enduring injustice. It deals with the fundamentals of human existence - sex, love, violence - that have shaped the lives of humans throughout history.

The answer? It's time to recognize that the treatment of women amounts to nothing less than an abuse of human rights on an unthinkable scale. A Brief History of Misogyny is an important and timely book that will make a long-lasting contribution to the efforts to improve those rights throughout the world.

Jack Holland was a highly respected author and journalist known particularly for his commentary about Northern Irish politics. He grew up in Belfast (where he was taught by Seamus Heaney) and worked with Jeremy Paxman and other outstanding journalists at BBC Belfast during a period of seminal current affairs programming. Jack published four novels and seven works of non-fiction, most of the latter having to do with politics and terrorism in Northern Ireland, including the best-selling Phoenix. Sadly, Jack died of cancer in 2004, just after the manuscript of Misogyny had been delivered and accepted by his US publisher. On his death, his family received letters of respect from statesmen including Ted Kennedy and Hilary Clinton, who had come to rely on his balanced analysis of Irish politics.

Lately, I've been reading a lot of theory and anthropology so I thought some history might be a nice change of pace. Early on, this book felt like yet another recitation of the wrongs against women. But as the book goes on, I was more and more drawn into not only the recurrent themes throughout history the author uncovers, but also how mercilessly he calls out misogyny in all aspects of history. I'd honestly never heard a feminist critique of the Third Reich, or Shakespeare being boldly called a misogynist. It's given me a lot of food for thought. Please give this a listen if you're interested in women's place throughout history!!!

This book offers an fierce and sound review of the movement of the ever-present prejudice held by man against his female co-human, as well as the many times this prejudice has turned women against their own, co-opting some in the war against their own sister-kind.Fine, exemplary work of the highest order.

First off, this is an important book that everyone -- particularly men -- should read. It does a good job revealing the long, grizzly history of misogyny, a necessary endeavor given how often the purported inferiority of women is taken for granted even in contemporary Western culture. It is often so disturbing that I imagine it would scare a lot of casual sexists into reexamining their views, were it incorporated into, say, a high school curriculum.

There are some shortcomings. For one, any history that begins with the kindling of Western civilization and proceeds to the present in a mere 10 hours is going to be somewhat generalized at times. Some of the bits on Greek and Roman history tends to treat these as somewhat more homogenous than might a book specifically about one of those topics, for instance.

The concluding chapter may be divisive among feminist listeners because it comes down on the side of there being innate differences between men and women, and claims that to deny this is to deny part of women's humanity. Holland's justifications for this view are unsatisfying, and I question the need for such a book to espouse any opinion on this matter -- the thesis feels tacked on to what is otherwise a brilliant work of research and observation.

A woman’s rights have been a moving target since the beginning of time; or at least since the beginning of recorded “history”. Jack Holland tracks “The World’s Oldest Prejudice”, misogyny (a human prejudice against women). Holland’s conflation of the horrors of Nazism with societal misogyny is hyperbolic. However, the truth of women’s domination, abuse, and murder by men is solid when Holland recounts the evidence of government practices, religious doctrines, philosophical treatises, science errors, and corroborated historical events.

As far back as the oldest laws of government written by a Sumerian King in 2,050 BC, women have been singled out with human rights’ violations. An example is the King’s law that particularly applies to women who speak insolently. They are to have their mouths scoured with salt; i.e. a law applying only to women slaves. Of course the law begs the question of why women are slaves.

Misogyny is a cancer in the body politic. Regulated freedom and equal opportunity are its cure. The diversity of human life demands equal opportunity for all. This does not mean everyone is equal but that each should be able to achieve what they are capable of achieving. Regulated freedom is a necessity because human beings are motivated by money, power, and prestige; each of which can lead to greed, corruption, and hubris. All human beings are subject to the same vices. All men and women should have an equal right to say yes or no to greed, corruption, and hubris. Holland’s point is that women do not have the same rights as men because of centuries of cultural bias.

The book makes clear the nature of the process that makes every woman double discriminated. That is, in every hated group there is another hated group: the women in that group. It is very clear that we will never be able to resolve any other form of prejudice until we have resolved this one. Read, pass it on. Note: There is some language in this book that some may find unpleasant. It is the nature of misogyny that some people and surely some parents will complain that they do not want exposure to these words, completely overlooking fact that those "bad" words are used in our culture to describe women. There are also some descriptions of things done to women that are quite disturbing. And again some will complain about the graphicness those descriptions while ignoring the fact that those things were actually done to the women in those scenes. As if we should talk about the mutilation of the genitals of 10 year old girls in words that don't upset us quite so much.

I found this to be an interesting book. I had never thought of the history of prejudice before reading this. It would be great if this were expanded to include all types of prejudices. I am not sure a book about the history of prejudice would prevent or change a person’s mind but would be interesting to understand more about prejudice.

Holland says he attempted to explain the oppression and brutalization of half the world’s population by the other half, throughout history. I found Holland’s explanation of the use of religion to suppress women most interesting. I had no idea how many women had been killed as witches over the course of history. Prior to reading this book I was aware that many cultures killed female babies at birth.

The book is well written and well researched. I found his analysis most interesting and agreed with him on equal rights. I just do not have great hopes that prejudice will disappear. I think this is a must read book for everyone. Should be discussed in high school or even sooner than that.

Cameron Stewart does a good job narrating the book. He is an award winning actor who also narrates audiobooks.

As a male, and a Caucasian male at that, I have unjustified privilege stolen from women and non-Caucasians over millennia, even though I am not wealthy, and despite my deliberately trying not to exercise this privilege. In this book, the author eloquently makes the case for this historical atrocity, puts it in context, and suggests how we humans might begin making a better world for all of us. Listening to it, I have renewed motivation to do what I can to help, or at least, to avoid setting back the positive start that some have made, including this author.

it brought to light the monstrous injustices woman have suffered over the last 2500 years

What did you like best about this story?

i liked that despite being relatively well read. i was unaware of most of these facts

What about Cameron Stewart’s performance did you like?

clear and intelligent narration

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

iris

Paris, France

6/30/13

Overall

Performance

Story

"A dissection of female oppression"

What was one of the most memorable moments of A Brief History of Misogyny?

The investigation into the treatment of women during the time of Ancient Greece which revealed the surprisingly relative freedom of the Spartan women compared with their Athenian sisters!

What does Cameron Stewart bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

Cameron Stewart's narration is excellent as his voice is warm and really brings the story to life.

Any additional comments?

This book is one of the best I have read about the treatment of women throughout the ages and one of the author's main contentions that societies where men largely outnumber women leads to increased oppression is very convincing. The investigation covers a vast range of historical, cultural and religious attitudes towards women which is most impressive and it is refreshing that this book was written by a man. The introduction concerning the author is extremely moving.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Teresa Cooper

9/13/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Why do we need women?"

Fantastic author, good book, marvellous narrator. I found this book so absorbing I forgot to make as many notes as I usually do. I would recommend this title to anyone and will definitely be listening to it again.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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